The present invention relates generally to refrigeration systems and methods, and more specifically to providing a modular or localized chiller compartment that is removable in selectable environments.
Refrigerators are among the most conventionally known appliances for cooling food items. Features providing convenience are important for consumers of refrigerators. For example, for ice making, today's customers demand ice delivered conveniently, at a location within the refrigerator preferable for them, while keeping the chilling time as minimal as possible. Thus, having the ability to make ice in a more convenient and faster way would be a big convenience. However, known attempts for making ice in a compartment separate from the main freezer unit of a refrigerator, such as portable refrigeration units, enjoy limited success due to their heavy weight and large size.
Various technology factors and customer preferences dictate positioning of functional units such as ice storage units, fresh food units in the refrigerator. For example, in Bottom Mount Freezer (BMF) type refrigerators, having freezer units below fresh food units is a customer preference, since cold stored foods are less frequently used as compared to foods stored in fresh food units. However, a problem arises for accessing ice, which may be frequently required, but is made in the freezer unit. Thus it is inconvenient to access ice frequently in a bottom mount freezer, since the freezer unit is located at the lowest level in the BMF type refrigerators. Accordingly, customer preference requires ice to be dispensed at a suitable height, much above the freezer unit. Contemporary attempts at providing ice at a preferred height include methods that require transporting ice from the freezer unit to the fresh food unit. Such methods are cumbersome to implement and add a lot of unnecessary equipment, adding to the cost and complexity of the whole system. Such and other solutions have been tried with limited success, and in general it is desirable to have simpler methods and systems for providing ice at a convenient location in a refrigerator. Similarly, for other known models of refrigerators, such as Side-by-Side and Top Mount Freezer type refrigerators, there may a customer preference to have a separate chiller unit for additional ice-making capability, and accordingly there exists a need for such an additional ice making method and system.
In general, it is desirable to have independent systems and methods for making ice that are simple to use and position in a convenient location of the existing refrigerators or generally can be placed in any environment. Thus, it will be advantageous and convenient to have modular methods and systems for making ice anywhere that are also capable of making ice in a suitable environment.